2015 marks the centenary of the commencement of Australia’s First Iraq War (1915-1918). Australia’s closest big city to Iraq, Darwin, is 10,066 kilometers from Basrah, and Canberra is 13, 289 kilometers from Baghdad, but distant Australia as a lackey of the US Alliance has recently embarked on Australia’s Seventh Iraq War in 100 years.

However the appalling reality of one of the world’s richest countries, Australia, repeatedly invading and devastating impoverished Iraq for a century is ignored by Mainstream media in look-the-other-way Australia. Iraq is just one of 85 countries Australians have invaded as UK lackeys or US lackeys – Australian state terrorism indeed [1].

Australia’s First Iraq War (WW1, 1915-1918). The Australian War Memorial reports “A month after the Gallipoli landing [Allied invasion of Turkey, 25 April 1915] , a detachment of the Australian Flying Corps arrived at Basra, on the Persian Gulf, to join in efforts to secure Britain's oil interests in Mesopotamia (Iraq) from the threat posed by Turkish forces. On arrival the 45 Australians joined up with a smaller group of Indian Flying Corps personnel and also Lieutenant W.W.A. Burn, a New Zealand army pilot… While the Gallipoli campaign ended in evacuation at the end of 1915, the operations in Mesopotamia took a more disastrous turn.

A large part of the British forces were besieged in Kut and forced to surrender in April 1916. Nine members of the Australian air detachment became prisoners of the Turks. Only two survived their captivity. By the time of Kut's fall, just one of the Mesopotamia Flight's eight original pilots was still in action. Despite the setback at Kut, the campaign in Mesopotamia continued and gave rise to a further, little-known boost to the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps] tradition. The ANZAC Wireless Signal Squadron was formed in 1916 and continued until 1918, when the Kiwis were withdrawn due to manpower shortages in the New Zealand Division fighting on the Western Front” [2].

Australia’s Second Iraq War (WW2, 1941). The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) supported British operations against Iraqis in the WW2 Anglo–Iraqi War in 1941 that resulted in the defeat of Iraqi rebels, re-occupation of Iraq by the British, and the return to power of the ousted pro-British puppet government [3, 4]. Assuming that excess mortality of Iraqis under British rule or hegemony (1914- 1948) was the same as for Indians under the British (interpolation from available data indicate Indian avoidable death rates in “deaths per 1,000 of population per year” of 37 (1757-1920), 35 (1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950)) [5], one can estimate from Iraqi population data [6] that Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation under British occupation and hegemony from 1914-1950 totalled about 4 million.

Australia’s Third Iraq War (Sanctions, 1990-2003). The Australian RAN joined the US Alliance in imposing crippling and deadly Sanctions on Iraq in the period 1990-2003. The Sanctions War against the Iraqi people devastated Iraqi infrastructure, resulted in 1.7 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation, and was associated with 1.2 million under-5 year old Iraqi infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Convention [7-10].

Australia’s Fourth Iraq War (Kurdistan, Iraq, 1991). Australian Defence Force (ADF) forces were sent to Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 under Operation Habitat that was part of the US Alliance operation known as Operation Provide Comfort to help and protect millions of Kurds displaced and threatened through civil war following the Gulf War [11].

Australia’s Fifth Iraq War (Gulf War, 1991). The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) supported US Alliance operations against Iraqis in the Gulf War that resulted in the deaths of about 0.2 million Iraqi military personnel [7].

Australia’s Sixth Iraq War (2003-2011). As in all other Australian Iraq Wars, Australia simply invaded Iraq in 2003 without declaration of war. Australian Special Forces spearheaded the US invasion of Iraq. The illegal and hence war criminal US Alliance invasion and occupation of Iraq, 2003-2011, was associated with 1.5 million Iraqi violent deaths [7, 12], 1.2 million Iraqi deaths from war-imposed deprivation, and 0.8 million under-5 year old Iraqi infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Convention [7].

Australia’s Seventh Iraq War (2014- ). The US lackey Australian Coalition Government with the support of the US lackey Labor Opposition (the Coalition and Labor Right being collectively referred to as the Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) commenced Australia’s Seventh Iraq War in 2014 with hundreds of ADF military advisers on the ground, and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) bombing of Sunni rebels (variously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Islamic State (IS) or Daesh), noting that these Sunni rebels (and other Sunni rebels in Syria) receive huge support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia [12] with the passive collaboration of Turkey.

Indeed the West has provided huge support for the Sunni revolt against the Syrian Government that has resulted so far in a Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide associated with about 200,000 Syrians deaths, 6.5 million Syrians displaced, and 3 million Syrians fleeing Syria [13, 14]. Australia through its joint US-Australia spying facility at Pine Gap is intimately involved in targeting US drone strikes against Iraq as well as against Libya, Somalia, the Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan [1, 15, 16] as well as in ultimately, via the US, supplying Apartheid Israel with spying data on Australians and indeed the whole world [15, 17].

Conclusions

Australians have invaded more countries (85) than those invaded by France (80), the British (193), the US (70) or Apartheid Israel (12), albeit as lackeys of British or American imperialism [1]. Indeed Australia has been involved in 30 genocidal atrocities, of which all are studiously ignored by Mainstream Australia and by the recently published and assertedly “authoritative” Cambridge History of Australia [18]. History ignored yields history repeated and because look-the-other-way Australia has an entrenched culture of denial, this remote and wealthy country is currently intimately involved in US Alliance military actions not just in Australia’s Seventh Iraq War but in a swathe of Muslim countries – Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, the Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan - variously with troops on the ground, bombing or the targeting of drone strikes.

While Mainstream Australian media, politicians and academics correctly condemn the barbarities of IS – notably the horrifying shooting, beheading and incinerating of prisoners – these same racist, warmongering and mendacious presstitutes ignore the horrible realities that RAAF bombing and Australia-targeted US drone strikes are ripping apart Iraqi bodies with high velocity metal fragments, dismembering Iraqis and incinerating Iraqis, and that Australia has been doing this to Iraqis for 100 years. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.

For decades Australia has been buying oil from Iraq and exporting wheat to Iraq. Australia’s closest big city to Iraq, Darwin, is 10,066 kilometers from Basrah, and Canberra is 13, 289 kilometers from Baghdad. Why has remote and rich Australia (per capita GDP $43,000) now embarked on Australia’s Seventh Iraq War in 100 years against an impoverished and devastated Iraq (per capita GDP $7,000)? The answer: formerly a lackey of British imperialism, Australia has been a US lackey since 1941 and when the US says “jump” Australia asks “how high?”

However it gets worse. Nuclear weapons, poverty and man-made climate change are the 3 major threats facing Humanity. However Australia is (1) intimately involved via its Pine Gap and other electronic surveillance facilities in US nuclear terrorism that threatens the survival of all Humanity ; (2) US lackey Australia's support for the American Empire helps support a world order in which 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year; and (3) climate criminal Australia is a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution and its policy of effective climate change inaction coupled with unlimited coal, gas and iron ore exports means that it will exceed by a factor of three the whole world's terminal Carbon Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise. Unaddressed man-made climate change is set to kill 10 billion people this century in a worsening Climate Genocide [19, 20]. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity – please tell everyone you can. Climate criminal and war criminal Australia will only stop invading other countries when the world tells it to stop.

While White Australia has benefited from the protection of the British Empire and thence the American Empire, over 100,000 Australians have died in Anglo-American wars and hundreds of thousands more Australian veterans have suffered physical and mental damage. One can estimate that 81,000 Australians die preventably each year, and over 1 million have died thus since the US Government's false-flag 9-11 atrocity (3,000 killed) that launched the Zionist-backed US War on Terror in which 10 million Muslims have died from violence or war-imposed deprivation as compared to only 1 Australian death ever in Australia at the hand of a Muslim-origin non-state terrorist (in Sydney, December 2014).

Yet the major Australian parties, the currently ruling Coalition and Opposition Labor (aka the Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) have committed to a long-term accrual cost of $125 billion for the Islamophobic US War on Terror and killing 10 million Muslims abroad rather than keeping 1 million Australians alive at home. Australian state terrorism indeed. Successive pro-Zionist, US lackey Australian Coalition Governments (with support from pro-Zionist, US lackey Labor) have compounded this appalling fiscal perversion and over 1 million preventable Australian deaths since 9-11 with horrendous Islamophobia, terror hysteria and draconian Muslim-targeting anti-terrorism laws that provide for severe penalties variously ranging up to life imprisonment for reading, writing, funding, espousing or supporting things that the Australian Government can simply proscribe at any time by proclamation [21]. Poor fellow my country.

Chris Coulthard-Clark, “ANZACs in Iraq. Gallipoli made ANZAC famous, but Australians and New Zealanders also fought side by side in the cradle of civilisation” , Australian War Memorial, Wartime Issue 14 .

Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web.

Gideon Polya, “Genocide in Iraq, The Case Against UN Security Council And Member States. Book Review”, Countercurrents, 8 February, 2013.

Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani, “Genocide in Iraq. The case against the UN Security Council and member states” (Foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino; Clarity Press, Atlanta).

“Operation Habitat”, Wikipedia.

David Blair, “Qatar and Saudi Arabia have ignited time bomb by funding global spread of radical Islam”, The Telegraph, 4 October 2014 .

“Syrian civil war”, Wikipedia.

“Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”.

Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence Spies On Australia And The World For UK, Israeli And US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013.